Leapfrog Press

“Exemplary storytelling that grapples with important themes. LaBrie’s collection of misanthropic short stories offers meditations on death, dying, grief, and organ donation.”  — Kirkus Reviews

In her award-winning collection of short stories, Rage and Other Cages, LaBrie offers lessons on grief, loneliness, and relationships that examine what it means to be female in today's America. 

The characters range from a former child actress turned real estate agent who yearns for her past, to a nurse who must convince a murderer to donate his girlfriend's organs, to a bartender at Ray's Happy Birthday Bar who is kidnapped by a customer searching for a mysterious key. Bad dates, bad jobs, and bad situations force these characters to use their wits and wiles to survive. In a voice akin to Lorrie Moore meets Mary Gaitskill, LaBrie has her readers laughing on one page and raging on another. Her voice is memorable, raw, and undeniably skillful.

2025 Recipient of THE ANNE FRANK AWARD FOR HUMAN DIGNITY AND TOLERANCE, from the Dutch Government
2024 Recipient of THE OFFICER'S CROSS OF THE ORDER OF MERIT of the Federal Republic of Germany, Germany's highest civilian medal
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST

“Irene Butter’s book is a triumph of clarity and concision, written with a passionate intent to inform and with not a shred of self-pity. It is by turns profound and intimate, and bears witness to the resilience of a family who drew strength from one another even through the darkness of the Holocaust. It is a shockingly honest and hopeful book.” — Andrew Solomon, National Book Award Winning Author The Noonday Demon and author of Far From The Tree Parent's Children, And The Search For Identity

“Irene Butter’s story is not your standard holocaust memoir. Instead, it recounts what happened to one family both during and after the war, and captures vividly the time from release from concentration camp to greeting a life back. It is compelling reading, and makes one realise how what happened in the immediate aftermath may have overshadowed the rest of Irene Butter’s life...” — Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger

Irene Butter’s memoir of her experiences before, during and after the Holocaust is not a recounting of misery and tragedy; rather it is the genuine story of a girl coming to terms with a terrible event and choosing to view herself as a survivor instead of a victim. When the Dutch police knock on their door, Irene and her family are forced to leave their home and board trains meant for cattle. They are taken to Nazi-controlled prison camps and finally to Bergen-Belsen, where Irene is a fellow prisoner with Anne Frank.

With limited access to food, shelter, and warm clothing, Irene’s family needs nothing short of a miracle to survive. Irene’s memoir tells the story of her experiences as a young girl before, during, and after the Holocaust, highlighting how her family came to terms with the catastrophe and how she, over time, came to view herself as a survivor rather than a victim. Throughout the book, her first-person account celebrates the love and empathy that can persist even in the most inhumane conditions.

Winner of the 2024 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize for Young Adult Fiction

Cat and Josie belong to different worlds, but they share a lifeline – their small town’s high school cross country team. Can they set aside their differences to do what’s best for their teammates – and themselves?

Cat Shultz needs a fresh start. After spending several months at an eating disorder treatment facility, she comes home to the realities of her older sister leaving for college, her best friend growing distant, and the stress of sophomore year looming. When an unlikely invitation lands her a spot on Plain City High School’s cross country team, Cat discovers a natural talent for long distance running, and what she hopes is a step toward recovery. The only problem? She’ll have to lie – to her parents, her team, and ultimately herself.

Josie Romero lives for cross country. When Coach Davis – the closest thing she has to a father – announces this will be his last season, she believes a championship win against their rivals will convince him to stay. As team captain, Josie has always fiercely supported her teammates, but when Cat challenges her spot as the fastest runner, Josie must confront her own insecurities in order to become the leader they deserve.

As the championship race approaches, conflicts arise on and off the course, and suddenly winning feels less likely than ever. When Cat can no longer outrun her lies, Josie finds herself racing for something much more important than the finish line.

Wolfpack is a heartwarming tale of healing, hope, and learning that you always go farthest if you run as a pack.

Plenty of things in Zora’s youth would seem strange to others, but they’re perfectly normal to her. Her mother’s fixation with germs, and parties, and the power of names. Her father, who Zora rarely sees, disappearing among the stars as his biggest claim to fame. Her role in explaining things to her younger sister, even as Zora works to discover her own philosophies of life. And her neighborhood, a one-way street with an entrance but no exit called "the Aves."

Zora wants more. More than an honorable name. More than glimpses of glory captured in window frames. Surviving childhood can be as intricate as the intertwined streets of Los Angeles. But as Zora grows, so does her story. And in the process, her desire for more is transformed into a tribute of the magnificent people who live alongside her.

"A Dante/Beckett reduction of human struggle to its lowest common denominator."—Michael Mirolla, author of The Formal Logic of Emotion and Berlin

"One of the most original and thought-provoking stories I have ever read...true literary art...Not a word is wasted in this masterpiece. Yes, I call it that. I have read many classics, and I can tell you that The Divine Farce should be counted among them; the finest in American literature."—Geekscribe

Three strangers are condemned to live together in darkness, crushed together in a concrete stall so small that they can never sit down. Liquid food drips down from above. Waste drains through a grid on the floor. So begins one of the strangest, most surreal comments on the human experience, on love and hatred and the human ability to find good in any situation, no matter how difficult. Michael S. A. Graziano delights in the macabre and surreal, yet it is his optimism that lifts this little novel. Like The Love Song of Monkey, this book is deeply thought provoking, horrifying, and funny.

Praise for The Love Song of Monkey:

"Imaginative, intelligent narrative. Twin ideas of forgiveness and mercy twist through this strange, moving, patiently wrought novel."—Publishers Weekly

"Fabulously imagined, seriously considered, and very funny. A kind of fairytale antithesis on the meaning of existence. . . . Fantastic."—Spirituality and Health Books

"Strange but wonderful . . . like nothing I’ve read before. A very short book, but the scope is epic in detail. . . . I enjoyed the heck out of this book."—Geekscribe

"Should be required reading in the writing grad schools. . . . There’s nary a word wasted. What’s left is comedy, retrospection, betrayal, tenderness, meditations on loneliness, a love story that survives all attempts to suppress it . . . not bad within 149 pages."—Barnstable Patriot

"Coe writes like a man with polished wings, flying above it all while watching the high and low tides of life." – E. Ethelbert Miller, co-editor, Poet Lore magazine

“Coe is a poet’s poet, a jazzy, postmodern Ben Johnson . . . understated, but shimmering with wit, compassion, integrity of purpose.” — The Phoenix

NOW AN INDEPENDENT FEATURE FILM
“ The Ghost Trap tells a harrowing tale of love, survival, and heartbreak”  – Kyle Bain, Bain’s Film Reviews , rated 8/10 

The haunting story of  a young lobsterman who is forced to choose between right and wrong when his girlfriend suffers a traumatic head injury and a rival lobstering family sabotages his gear, sparking a deadly trap war.  

“Stephens gives the reader an unvarnished view of the subculture of lobster fishermen in small-town coastal Maine.”  —  James Acheson, author of The Lobster Gangs of Maine

“Stephens has a wonderful clear eye for people, especially Maine people, and The Ghost Trap is populated with dozens from all walks of Maine life.” —  Bill Roorbach, author of Temple Stream

“A salty, tangy read. . . . Stephens plunges you into the back-breaking, heart-breaking life of one lobsterman.” —  Richard Grant, author of Another Green World

“Stephens nails harbor life down to the unwritten rules and defense of imaginary territory lines. . . . Peppered with dark humor and brutal honesty, The Ghost Trap gives it to you straight, the way life should be.” —  Ryan Post, fourth-generation lobsterman, creator of Mainebuggin.com

“Characters and setting that reflect a real, raw piece of Maine. . . . With Anja and Jamie, Stephens introduces us to characters whose stories and situations are heartbreaking. This book reminds us that as complicated as lobster fishing might be, human relationships are always more fraught with difficulty.” —  Portland Phoenix

"Coe writes about his parents with warmth, insight, and grace . . . with celebration as well as regret. A collection that captures the tenderness and intimacy within the black family. His words construct a path from the innocence of childhood into the winter of aging. His book will outlive much of the poetry being written today."—E. Ethelbert Miller

No relationship is more personal, yet universal, than that of parent and child. These richly detailed poems connect readers with their own experiences in that most fundamental of relationships, and are poignant reminders that the lives of those closest to us sometimes offer the deepest mysteries.

"domesticity"

pampered little girl
no crystal ball to warn you
of dirty laundry mountains.

From "How My Father Learned to Cook":

Because of the tomatoes in a neighbor's garden,
my father learned to cook. Because of late summer
home-grown Indiana tomatoes, drooping on the vine
my father learned to cook. Imagine him at twelve leaning
over the fence of the neighbor's garden curious but shy,
and the neighbor pointing to the open gate.
Imagine father digging in the soil, caught in the rhythm
of the gardener's dance
and later handing his surprised mother
the overstuffed paper bag.

A pretty story, but it never happened; here's what did:

Charles Coe's poetry and prose have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, and his poems have been set to music by composers Julia Carey, Beth Denisch, and Robert Moran. Coe also writes feature articles, book reviews, and interviews for Harvard Magazine, Northeastern University Law Review, and the Boston Phoenix. He is also a jazz vocalist, performing and recording throughout New England.

From humble beginnings in Brazil to becoming part of the most feared attacking trio in world soccer, Neymar has come a long way. But his path to the top was far from straightforward. After overcoming an injury that nearly finished his career, he struggled with the burdens and frustrations of carrying the dreams of a nation, at the age of just 24. Join the new Prince of Santos as he embarks on a personal quest – and wins some of the biggest trophies in soccer on the way.  Neymar plays for Al Hilal in the  Saudi Pro League  and the Brazil National Team. 

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch series.  These fast-moving reads offer a fresh take on the familiar football biography format.

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads. So, meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

Messi was Barcelona's star player and one of the world's best footballer players. But as a boy he stopped growing at 11 and coaches worried he wasn't big enough. 

Discover the story of how Messi proved them wrong and how this boy from South America fought to become possibly the greatest football player of all time.

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch series. These fast-moving reads offer a fresh take on the familiar football biography format.

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads. So, meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

Scoring over 790 goals during his career so far, Cristiano Ronaldo is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. Winning trophies as both a forward for Manchester United and Captain of the Portuguese national team, Ronaldo is one of the biggest names in football. 

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's   Tales from the Pitch   series.  These fast-moving reads offer a fresh take on the familiar football biography format. 

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads.  So, meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD longlist nominee, Helen Phillips's debut novel, And Yet They Were Happy is "A gallery of marvels."--Washington Post

A young couple comes of age in a surreal world of apocalypse, delight, longing, and tenderness. 

A young couple sets out to build a life together in an unstable world haunted by monsters, plagued by disasters, full of longing—but also one of transformation, wonder, and delight, peopled by the likes of Noah, Bob Dylan, the Virgin Mary, and Anne Frank. Hovering between reality and fantasy, whimsy and darkness, these linked fables describe a universe both surreal and familiar.

"From page one, Amphibians is the work of an extraordinary talent. How shrewd and compelling these stories are, as they range from Maine to New York to Japan to the Emirates and back. Their remarkable gift is to show us – wisely and sharply – the crucial contradictions of feeling in whatever unfolds, from passing encounters to long-held ties.” — Joan Silber, PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Improvement and 2019 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize judge

Sophisticated and bright with promise…these stories elucidate incredibly difficult-to-articulate topics such as jealousy, self-hatred, unlikely connection and friendship.… If a writer's job is to make the unseen visible, the stories in VANISHING are flashlights, illuminating the subtle, enormous tragedies we humans encounter every day.— Marie-Helene Bertino, author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas

Praise for Cai Emmons' novels
Gripping. Brings home the power and terror of maternal love. —O Magazine

Emmons…has an eye for the grating intimacy of small-town life and a fine ear for suggestive metaphors.… Unusual and memorable. —The Economist

Lovely writing… Emmons' emphasis is on her characters, and she draws them well. —Seattle Times

With family relations as twisted as a French braid and language as vivid as a platinum dye job, Emmons' potent novel features magnetic characters and complex and compelling secrets. — Booklist
A gift of a book, an affecting story of violence and forgiveness.—Bookpage

Accomplished playwright and filmmaker Emmons tests chilly waters in this ambitious, unsettling debut.—Publishers Weekly

Gorgeous writing throughout makes for an unusually affecting and memorable debut. —Kirkus Reviews

Cai Emmons is the author of the novels His Mother's Son (which won an Oregon Book Award), The Stylist, and her newest, Weather Woman (fall 2018), about a meteorologist who discovers she has the power to change the weather. Emmons was formerly a playwright and screenwriter; her short fiction has appeared in such publications as TriQuarterly, Narrative, and Arts and Culture, among others. She has taught filmmaking at the University of Southern California and Orange Coast College, and creative writing and screenwriting at the University of Oregon.

"A fast-paced narrative. . . . compelling and intense reading, by turns funny, tender, and horrifying, Girl Singer is the real deal—a captivating, well-told tale." —Fred Kasten, Edward R. Murrow Award-winning journalist

"Carlon is a natural heir of Robert Louis Stevenson. If you like good fiction, you'll like Girl Singer." —Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz

"Carlon is a unique educational force, bringing young readers into the pleasures and drama of jazz." —Nat Hentoff, Jazz Country, Boston Bay, etc.

"An arresting and wonderful story that communicates—through a deep relationship between a singer and a Holocaust survivor—the joy of music, self-discovery, pain, and racism." —Dick Golden, host of George Washington University Presents American Jazz

"Avery's story tackles hard topics—racism, women's rights—which transcend time and place. A tale with deep resonance and educational force, that will keep readers turning pages." –Marilyn Lester, executive director, the Duke Ellington Center for the Arts

Harlem 1938: eighteen-year-old Avery, aspiring singer, is heard by Lester "Pres" Young, Count Basie's tenor saxophonist. Pres recommends her to Basie, and Avery is whisked into the jazz life. Years later, with several hit records to her credit, Avery settles in Greenwich Village. But her life takes a sharp turn when she meets Karl, a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany.

Mick Carlon is a thirty-year veteran English and journalism teacher at the high and middle school levels, and the author of the middle-grade novels Riding on Duke's Train and Travels with Louis. He is a frequent contributor to Jazz Times.

“The power of Raphael’s stories comes from his passion for telling the truth, however painful.”—Hadassah Magazine

“His characters are voices of reason, observers rather than judges. The prose is poetic, the sex scenes sweat with passion.”—Los Angeles Times

When Lev Raphael published the controversial story collection Dancing on Tisha B’av, he broke new ground in the publishing world. Never before in one book had an American writer dealt with the conflicts between homosexuality and traditional Judaism, linked the chilling mind diseases of antisemitism and homophobia, and borne witness not only to the legacy of Holocaust survivors but the suffering and conflicts of their children. Winner of the prestigious Lambda Literary Award, Raphael opened the door to a new kind of American Jewish fiction.

Secret Anniversaries of the Heart unites the best stories from Dancing on Tisha B’av with 12 new stories, including one never before published. Here we encounter tales of antisemitism on the college campus, of self-hatred and body obsession, and of survivor parents whose only response to the Holocaust is to isolate themselves, unconsciously committing a kind of emotional suicide.

In a collection that encompasses over 25 years of his award-winning stories, Lev Raphael proves himself a visionary like James Baldwin and shares Anita Brookner’s gift for dramatizing the pain of seemingly quiet lives in stories that are both passionate and precise.

Lev Raphael is the author of 17 books published in a dozen languages. A winner of the Lambda Literary Award, among many prizes, his short works have appeared in numerous anthologies, including the star-packed Who We Are: On Being (and Not Being) A Jewish American Writer (Schocken/Random House). The author of a popular mystery series, he performs all over the country and hosts a weekly book show on NPR.

A Fast Paced Espionage Thriller for Alan Furst Fans Set In Post-Cold War Poland.

"Sharply drawn characters, rich dialogue, and a clever conclusion bode well for any sequel." – Publishers Weekly 

“Smith skillfully bridges police procedural and espionage fiction, crafting a show-stealing sense of place and realistically pairing the threats of underworld crime and destabilized regimes.” – Booklist 

For International Espionage Fans of Alan Furst and Daniel Silva, a new thriller set in post-Soviet era Poland. 

It is 1992 in Warsaw, Poland, and the communist era has just ended. A series of grisly murders suddenly becomes an international case when it's feared that the victims may have been couriers smuggling nuclear material out of the defunct Soviet Union. The FBI sends an agent to help with the investigation. When he learns that a Russian physicist who designed a portable atomic bomb has disappeared, the race is on to find him—and the bomb—before it ends up in the wrong hands.

Smith’s depiction of post-cold war Poland is gloomily atmospheric and murky in a world where nothing is quite as it seems. Suspenseful, thrilling, and smart, The Fourth Courier brings together a straight white FBI agent and gay black CIA officer as they team up to uncover a gruesome plot involving murder, radioactive contraband, narcissistic government leaders, and unconscionable greed.

"Move over Walt Longmire. Make room for Franz Kafka, aka 'K.' Expertly plotted, beautifully written, eloquent, colloquial, wry, insightful . . . Medhat demonstrates a keen sense of place and Navajo culture and history, with superior attention to language; smart, witty, often humorous and always precise analogies, metaphors, and similes. A sharp eye for detail and sprachgefühl for putting observations into words. Style, grace, a confident, compelling, and controlled narrative voice. The sophisticated narration dances from omniscient to close-third without any false steps or trips. A very smooth operator, this writer. The characters glide off the page. This book is a high-wire act, and the author shines a bright, steady beam on the dark stage where clashing cultures meet."—Sara Pritchard, author of Crackpots

Quixotic cop Franz Kafka's small-town routine is disrupted by a mysterious death at Chimney Rock. Navajo cop Robbie Begay joins the murder investigation, which leads the mismatched duo across the reservation into the victim's fraught past, to associates living under the shadow of heinous crimes, cunningly camouflaged meth-merchants, and sweet-natured squash-growers. The killer, it turns out, is much closer to home.

Katayoun Medhat was raised in Iran and Germany and studied anthropology in Berlin and London. Before training as an intercultural therapist, she worked in an adolescent psychiatric unit, which taught her much about human resilience. For her PhD in medical anthropology, she researched mental health and alcohol rehab services on the Navajo Nation, and along the way learned to appreciate the healing power of humor as life force.

A Summer for Moths is the ballad of Booth Baker — working musician and songwriter hiding out in the guise of a handyman and running from childhood trauma. Haunted by his toxic southern upbringing and a death in high school that forced him to flee his hometown, Booth must confront and deal with the trauma of his past before finding a stable home in the future. 

When Booth receives the call from his estranged brother with a summer job offer helping maintain rental properties along the coast of Connecticut, he’s thrust into the secret world of the “Gold Coast.” Meeting Abby Evers one day on a roofing job, Booth is transfixed, leading him to declare that a woman like Abby is “visible wonder.” His desire brings him, moth-like, closer to the flames. He soon learns that Abby’s husband Sam and his business partners operate a secret circle of abuse, and deadly. Unable to leave Abby to these monsters, Booth endeavors to help expose the abusers all while placing his own life and future with Abby on the line.

“An hilarious, dark, brittle take on post-modern medicine, love triangles, the dense emptiness of contemporary life, and the power of contemplative self-discovery. Part magic realism, part science fiction, part theater of the absurd, and part over-the-top, unrepentant spoof, this novel packs more into its few short pages than do most epic trilogies. Graziano has fabricated the rare kind of tale that the reader can honestly say ends much too quickly. Perfectly woven, self-enclosed, multifaceted . . . Kosinski’s Being There sprinkled with a strong dose of Frankenstein . . . the kind of simplicity that speaks volumes.”—Michael Mirolla, author of The Formal Logic of Emotion 

“An amalgam of fairy tale, satire, science fiction, medical thriller, and soap opera. . . . It is difficult to fathom that a novel so brief can be so epic in scope. Inventive and deftly crafted, The Love Song of Monkey is a tale no reader will soon forget.”—Eric Linder, Yellow Umbrella Books, Chatham, Massachusetts

In a surreal exile on the floor of the Atlantic, a young man faces his own death and his wife’s infidelity. The Love Song of Monkey is a meditation on the simple, inexplicable, and lasting power of love, cast in the metaphor of a journey to the depths of the ocean floor. Precise and beautifully crafted, this modern fable is rich with humor and deep thought.

WINNER of the 2025 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize

“You already fly, so why should I? You are my wings.”

In the heart of Manhattan, a starving artist survives by sketching strangers in Central Park — until one morning a woman in a power suit sits down and commands him: “Draw me."

She’s rich, brilliant, and utterly unlike the world he knows. He’s drawn to her with an intensity that feels dangerous, and soon their connection blurs the line between art and reality.

What begins as a portrait turns into a relationship — one that spirals into dependence, desire, and coercive control.

But João’s journey to the top has not been easy.

As a skinny kid he’d already given up on soccer once, before harnessing his inner strength and determination to win both the Portuguese and the Spanish leagues.

Join “the heir to Ronaldo” on his mission to become one of the greatest players in the game.

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch series.

These books offer a fresh take on the familiar soccer biography format.

Each of these fast-moving reads focuses on one up-and-coming soccer superstar, players who are still to reach the summit of their career.

From the young Portuguese talent João Felix, to Virgil van Dijk and Raheem Sterling, these biographies cover the full range of European soccer. The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, to ultimately make their dreams come true.

So meet the fresh young talent behind the iconic tackles and goals and find out what makes each of these players so special.

But getting into the first team proved to be much more difficult than he expected.

His journey into professional soccer wasn’t easy, but his flexibility, his sheer skill and his willingness to work harder than anyone else was always going to win out.

Join wonderkid Bernardo Silva on his journey to the very top, winning countless trophies and achieving international stardom with one of the greatest teams in the world.

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch series.

These books offer a fresh take on the familiar soccer biography format.

Each of these fast-moving reads focuses on one up-and-coming soccer superstar, players who are still to reach the summit of their career. From the young Portuguese talent João Felix, to Virgil van Dijk and Raheem Sterling, these biographies cover the full range of European soccer. The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, to ultimately make their dreams come true.

So meet the fresh young talent behind the iconic tackles and goals and find out what makes each of these players so special.

Like Sir Francis Drake and Lord Horatio Nelson in Kevin Jackson’s acclaimed maritime history series, Captain James Cook was also born of humble means. The son of a Scottish farm labourer and a mother from Yorkshire, Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager on June June 1755, and would go on from his humble beginnings to become an explorer, master navigator, cartographer and one of the most celebrated naval Captains in British history. 

Cook’s Endeavour is Jackson’s masterful chronicle of Captain Cook’s first Pacific Ocean voyage; a landmark journey which resulted in the mapping of largely uncharted areas of New Zealand and Australia, first encounters with aboriginal tribes and leaps and bounds in botanical discovery. Aboard the Endeavour, Cook mapped a whole new world.

But Cook’s historic journey was not without tribulation, or without challenge – the famed botanist Joseph Banks, Cook’s contemporary and natural science expert on the Endeavour, was everything Cook was not; dapper, aristocratic, awarded with instantaneous fame for his discoveries in the aptly named Botany Bay. 

Cook’s Endeavour is the thrilling and inspiring story of a boy, lured in his youth to the sea, who became a man forever synonymous with discovery, legacy and adventure.

Through the eyes of her protagonist, Hazel Hawthorne, Faith Shearin shows us how one family can endure danger, illness, separation, and grief, using folklore as both escape and salvation. 

My Sister Lives in the Sea   weaves together folklore and life on a barrier island; the Hawthorne family fights through divorce and loss as Bigfoot lurks nearby. 

"An insightful and beautifully rendered love-story about two rarely portrayed characters I hope we see more of."
Blair Fell, author of novels The Sign For Home  & upcoming Disco Witches of Fire Island

WHAT I FORGOT TO TELL YOU is an engrossing coming-of-age love story, sans any sugar-coating, about two neurodivergent young people dealing with the often unjust, ableist world and their right and ability to find love and joy. 

Insightful, touching, gut-wrenching, original and important. A book which gives voice to characters we rarely ever hear from in fiction. A story that is a resource to open our minds to other ways of experiencing the world and everyone's right to experience love and commitment.

It didn't always look as though Raheem Sterling would make it as a world-class player. From a difficult start in life to a tough time in the spotlight, Raheem has always had to think on his feet. This is the incredible story of how a boy who grew up in the shadow of Wembley Stadium used his grit and passion to steer himself to the very top.

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads.  So, meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

A SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION AWARD WINNER

“Beautifully written and exquisitely conceived . . . an adventure for the coming climate change apocalypse. Jack leads readers through a forbidding continent of ice and other environmental consequences with little more than a willing heart and a fierce intelligence.” — Jane Rosenberg LaForge, author of The Hawkman

Jack, a 200-year-old intersex street kid, knows the world didn’t always look like it does now, with the Great Garbage Ocean spewing plastic and jellyfish along the shores and humanity on the brink of extinction.

As he travels through the desert in search of answers, his love, Joon, by his side, he remembers things from his lives before this one. The massive tidal wave that separated him from everyone he knew. His encounter with a trickster god. A world blanketed in never-ending ice, and his desperate trek across frozen lakes, through still-standing monuments to the past, and over roaring waterfalls to reach the salt sea.

In every life Jack has lived though, one thing has stayed the same: people’s will to survive.

“An inventive prequel to Jellyfish Dreaming . . . [with] post-apocalyptic settings that evoke more of Maurice Sendak than Mad Max, overcoming mounting cynicism about humanity to reactivate a sense of play.” — Michael J. Deluca, author of The Jaguar Mask

“In this strangely comforting skid into the apocalypse, D. K. McCutchen spins ice into electricity.” — Kirsten Mosher, author of Plea$e Steal Me for 100 Plus Dollar-zz

Born in a small Pennsylvania town, it was never certain that Christian Pulisic would be able to realize his full potential.  But his youth, agility and impressive skills have taken Christian to some of the most demanding leagues in the world - and made him captain of the United States national team. After playing a crucial role in Chelsea's 2021 Champions League victory, Pulisic has now moved to serial Champions League winner, AC Milan.

This is the astonishing story of how this impressive youngster became the most expensive American soccer player in history.

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch series. These fast-moving reads offer a fresh take on the familiar football biography format.

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads. So, meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

Meet Sam: the last good man on earth. 

A man has lived on his own beside the sea for many years. From a choice made long ago, he keeps himself separate from the world of people, and is completely at one with his environment. His solitude is broken by the discovery, one early morning on the flat sands of a low tide, of a child washed up on the beach. Somehow, she is still alive. 

In the village, a woman reflects on a lifelong fascination with an ancient love story as she faces an unknown future. The new arrival on the beach sets in chain a sequence of events that no one can alter, and in this mystical and powerful novel, we witness a man experiencing our world as though for the first time. Discover Sam, the last good man on earth.

Strong, quick, and physically dominant – Erling Haaland is the Manchester City striker who has it all. From an early age, his impatience and his determination to succeed always singled him out as a player to watch. This is the inspiring story of how a boy from Bryne in Norway used his extraordinary skill and his total self-belief to become one of the greatest strikers in the world.

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch series. These fast-moving reads offer a fresh take on the familiar football biography format.

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads. So, meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

Mohamed Salah is Liverpool's superstar forward, and he is on a mission to become the best player in the world. This exciting book follows his adventures across the world – from the heat of Egypt to the magic of Rome, the roar of Anfield stadium and – finally – his big chance in a Champions League Final.

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch series. These fast-moving reads offer a fresh take on the familiar football biography format. 

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads.  So, meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

The South Korean player Son Heung-min is now considered to be one of the best wingers in the world. Currently playing for Tottenham Hotspur as a winger and a striker, he is also captain of the South Korea National Team. Son was selected as one of the 30 best players in the world for 2019. 

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's   Tales from the Pitch  series.  These fast-moving reads offers a fresh take on the familiar football biography format. 

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads.  So meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

Quick, composed and physically dominant – Virgil van Dijk is the defender who has it all. But from washing dishes while he tried to secure his first professional contract to facing rejection and serious illness, it didn't always seem as if Virgil was going to make it to the top. 

This is the inspiring story of how a boy from Breda used his determination and self-belief to become one of the greatest defenders in the world. 

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch   series.  These fast-moving reads offer a fresh take on the familiar football biography format. 

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads.  So meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

Now a lethal striker for his boyhood club – and an international superstar – Marcus Rashford is living his dream. But from navigating a ruthless academy to playing under one of the fiercest managers in the game, Marcus's meteoric rise to the top of Manchester United wasn't always easy. 

This is the story of how a boy from Manchester used his passion and his talent to steer himself on a path to greatness. 

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch series. These fast-moving reads offer a fresh take on the familiar football biography format.

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads. So, meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

As a teenager, Kylian Mbappé was one of the best footballers on the planet. Now – he just keeps on getting better. Kylian's skill, pace and sensational finishing have fired his clubs and his country to incredible victories, whilst he has established himself firmly in the record books. Follow the whirlwind journey of this football-mad boy from Paris, who never let the weight of the world's expectations slow his journey to becoming a legend. 

This fictionalised biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch series. These fast-moving reads offer a fresh take on the familiar football biography format.

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads. Printed on cream paper with a dyslexia-friendly font, these are also ideal books for reluctant and dyslexic readers. So, meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

Robert Lewandowski is one of the best strikers of his generation – but his journey to the top wasn't always easy. Finding himself without a club at the age of 17, Robert had no choice but to claw his way upthrough the ranks of Polish football. It led him to the top of one of the world's toughest leagues, the German Bundesliga. 

Join Robert on his unwavering mission to become one of the greatest players of all time. 

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch series. These fast-moving reads offer a fresh take on the familiar football biography format.

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads. So, meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

"Duke used to say that the individual sound of a musician revealed his soul. Mick Carlon is a 'soul' storyteller."—Nat Hentoff, author of Jazz Country

"A ripping good yarn. . . . Plunges the reader into the world of Duke Ellington and the America of 1939."—Brian Morton, author of The Penguin Guide to Jazz

"Wonderfully convincing and authentic characterizations. . . . A thoroughly enjoyable read."—Dan Morgenstern, author of Living with Jazz 

"We encounter not only Duke's genius, but his character and humanity. This is one train you won't want to get off!"—Dick Golden, radio host

"When this marvelously evocative novel finds a home in the school curriculum, kids across America will be downloading Duke."—Jack Bradley

"Excellent command of voice, period, and ethnic dialect . . . clear love and in-depth knowledge of Ellington and his band."—Alexandria LaFaye, author of The Keening

Nine-year-old Danny stows away on Duke Ellington's train one Georgia night. Through Danny's eyes, we meet some of America's finest musicians as he accompanies them on their 1939 European tour, when the train was briefly held in Germany. Says Nat Hentoff, "I knew Duke Ellington for twenty-five years. The Ellington in this book is the man I knew."

Mick Carlon is a twenty-seven-year veteran English/journalism high- and middle-school teacher. A lifelong jazz fan, he regularly plays jazz in his classroom and has turned hundreds of students into jazz fans. He says, "If young people are simply exposed to the music and stories of these American artists, they will make a friend for life."

For more than four centuries, Sir Francis Drake has been world-famous for his feats as a master mariner – the captain who “singed the King of Spain’s beard” with his daredevil attack on the fleet at Cadiz, and who led the British Navy to victory against the Spanish Armada in 1588.

But Drake’s exploits in his earlier years, though less well known, are even more remarkable. Born into a poor, obscure family, he worked his way rapidly up in the maritime world to his first captaincy. Before long, he was the most successful of all English pirates, admired by his countrymen, hated and feared by the Spanish.

Queen Elizabeth and her ministers saw the potential in this rough-mannered but enterprising young man, and gave him their blessing for the first British venture into the Pacific Ocean. This success of this voyage, which lasted for three years, exceeded their wildest hopes. Not only did Drake come home with a vast treasure of captured gold, silver and jewels; he became the first man ever to circumnavigate the globe in a single mission, and bring most of his crew home alive and well. Soon after his triumphant return, Elizabeth knighted this newly rich adventurer, and gave her blessing to his acts of pillage. It was a gesture that made war with Spain inevitable. And Drake’s part in the coming war changed the course of world history.

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE: THE QUEEN’S PIRATE tells the extraordinary story of Drake’s early years and his journey around the world on his famous ship, the Golden Hind.

At forty-four, Kay Sorensen has quit drinking, smoking, and overeating, and she has almost quit reading self-help books about quitting drinking, smoking and overeating. She has divorced her deadbeat husband, finished college, and landed a job she loves directing a small branch of the county library.

But Kay still has one unconquered addiction: she just can’t say no to someone who needs her.

Praise for other books by Molly Giles

“What an irreverent, original voice!”

— Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

"Roll over, Evelyn Waugh, here's Molly Giles. She's the authentic satiric voice – a rare bird in American Letters – wicked, affectionate, and amused."

— Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun

"Molly Giles is the funniest writer of tragedy this country possesses." 

— Lucy Ferriss, author of The Misconceiver

"Molly Giles is like a dancer who can't put a foot down wrong."
— Cyra McFadden, author of The Serial

One year after her stunning debut with The War at Home ("Remarkable. Poignant and unforgettable."—Library Journal, starred review), Nora Eisenberg returns with a gripping and humorous new novel about a daughter’s search for the truth about her father.

Suzy Vogel is in her mid-40s. With one failed marriage already behind her, she is simply unable to commit, to a great guy who wants to tie the knot, to a great job as a New York City magazine reporter. Sexually pliant, generous to a fault, her own best interests always come last. When, on the eve of a new life, she discovers that her father, a charismatic ex-convict always in and out of prison for his political organizing, is not buried in the family plot, indeed may not be dead at all, she’s compelled to begin a cross-country journey that leads her to the truth about his heroic altruism and an understanding of the obsessions to please people and to "blend in" that have thwarted her attempts at happiness all her life.

Combining a warm, street-wise voice reminiscent of the early Grace Paley, breathtaking twists of plot, compassionate but outrageous characterizations and a harrowing cross-country bus trip from Ft. Lauderdale to the Santa Monica Pier, Just The Way You Want Me explores the cultural legacies of deeply committed political families and the life-long struggles of their children to measure up to their parents’ idealistic dreams.

An excerpt from The Kitchen Man

Everyone else I know accepts temporary malaise, the blues, as an ordinary human infirmity like the flu and sees nothing wrong with a few lackluster days of self-pampering and doughy lying about. But my own chosen love, my Cynthia, the caramel center of my bittersweet life, views depression as indistinguishable from masturbation and weight lifting: a waste of limited male energy.

I admit it. The tides of my disposition fluctuate with my luck at the mail box. Following this morning's letter of rejection I returned to the house with the glazed, magnetized eyes of the children of the damned.

"Uh oh," was all Cynthia said.

"Maybe it's a sign. Maybe I should give up playwriting. Finally admit it. No, I do not have any talent. It's time I grew up, accepted the fact that some people have it and some people never will."

She waited for me to finish. It is no secret that in her women's group I am known as Uncle Vanya.

"Maybe I should just give up and find something I'm good at."

"How about pottery? Or the guitar," she said. "Definitely. The guitar. And give yourself a solid month. Then if the Rolling Stones don't ask you to join them, take up, let's see, sand painting." According to Cynthia you don't pout about rejections

Praise for John Smelcer:

"Smelcer's anger about these stolen children is apparent but controlled, and he provides a well-judged balance of horror and hope, with the friendship among his protagonists giving the book heart." —Horn Book

"A poignant story of colonization and assimilation, something I know a little bit about. A masterpiece." —Chinua Achebe

"Smooth, cadenced telling. . . . The four protagonists are accessibly teen, which gives their plight an immediacy." —Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"Smelcer's prose is lyrical, straightforward, and brilliant . . . authentic Native Alaskan storytelling at its best." —School Library Journal starred review

"A spare tale of courage, love and terrible obstacles." —Wall Street Journal

"A thought-provoking and moving coming-of-age story." —Publishers Weekly

"Heart-tugging moments of clarity and poignancy that recall Jean Craighead George's Julie of the Wolves." —Booklist

"This writer speaks from the land, and for the land, and the people who belong to it." —Ursula K. Le Guin

Kiska's home in the Aleutian Islands is a peaceful paradise until Japan invades in 1942. Soon after, a US naval ship arrives to evacuate everyone in her village to an internment camp almost 2,000 miles away—where they are forgotten. Informed by true events, this is the story of a teenage girl who steps up when her people need a hero.

John Smelcer is the author of over forty books, including essays, story collections, poetry, adult novels, and six YA novels.

"A fun read! Murphy sure knows how to weave a story. He had me from page one. Whether you're a young reader or an adult, you'll want to join the journey. And don't forget to admire the view: Adam Taylor's illustrations are as vivid and evocative as the writing."—Lisa Mullins, PRI’s The World

“A captivating, fresh addition to a long list of Christmas titles. Murphy is one of those rare adults who is strongly in tune with his eight-year-old self, able to capture the excitement, adventure, and feelings of childhood, and the magic of Christmas. His tale of twists and turns, actions and dilemmas is told as if he actually lived it. . . . Perhaps he did!”—Martha Zschock, author of Journey Around Cape Cod

“A sweet, imaginative story about something that writers, budding writers and educators can relate to: writer’s block.”—Emily Chetkowski, author of Pumpkin Smile

Praise for the Belltown Mystery series:

“Murphy is a Robert Ludlum for the 10-14 year old set, but with more likeable characters and more fun amidst the terror. —Dan Scully, Boston Magazine

“A novel that middle school readers will devour.”—ForeWord Magazine

When eight-year-old Ryder asks Santa to help his uncle Ted overcome writer’s block and create another amazing story, he cannot know that they’ll both be getting the best present ever. But is it real, or just a wonderful Christmas dream?

T.M. Murphy, featured in the new book 101 Highly Successful Novelists, is the author of the Belltown Mystery series, listed as a Favorite New Series by BookSense Children’s 76. Murphy spends his days touring schools, motivating kids to write, and teaching young writers during the summer at The Writers’ Shack in his hometown.

Adam Taylor's diversified illustration and animation talent has appeared in television, film, publishing and the Internet, with projects for MGM Studios, Disney, Virgin Records, CBS, National Geographic Kids, VH-1 and MTV. Productions include Pink Panther, Baby Pink Panther & Pals, Stargate Infinity, Bulletproof Monk, and the "Pink Panther's Penthouse Party" music video featuring Henry Mancini's Grammy-Award-winning "Pink Panther" theme. Adam, a Massachusetts native, now lives in Los Angeles.

"Smelcer clearly knows his way around Alaskan mountains."—David Roberts, author of The Mountain of My Fear

Praise for Edge of Nowhere:

"A survival story, but one with a strong heart."—ForeWord Reviews

"A thought-provoking and moving coming-of-age story."—Publishers Weekly

"Another gripping literary triumph for Smelcer."—Midwest Book Review

Praise for Lone Wolves:

"A beautiful and moving story of courage and love."—Ray Bradbury

"An engaging tale of survival, love, and courage."—School Library Journal

"[Smelcer] promises to further solidify his status as 'Alaska's modern day Jack London.'"—Suzanne Steinert, Mushing

"Powerful, eloquent, and fascinating, showcasing a vanishing way of life in rich detail."—Kirkus

"Combines good old-fashioned adventure . . . with heart-tugging moments of clarity and poignancy that recall Julie of the Wolves."—Booklist

"A compassionate and inspiring tale . . . highlights the importance of family, community, and heritage."—Midwest Book Review

Brothers Sebastian and James Savage decide to climb one of the highest Alaskan mountains to prove themselves to their father. Inspired by true events, Savage Mountain is not a story of father-son reconciliation, but a touching story of two brothers who test their limits and learn that no matter how different they might be, the strongest bond of all is brotherhood.

John Smelcer is poetry editor of Rosebud and the author of more than forty books. He is an Alaskan native of the Ahtna tribe, and a skilled mountaineer. He divides his time between Talkeetna, Alaska, and Kirksville, Missouri, where he teaches in the department of communications studies at Truman State University.

"Controlled, poetically laconic prose . . . a perfect distillation of the ways that grief seems unfathomably large and mysterious."—Lev Raphael, author of Rosedale in Love

"Armstrong's characters are . . . elevated to the heights of tragedy through careful attention to detail and voice."—Las Vegas Weekly

These stories occupy the space between dark realities and the fantastic leaps of faith people make to survive. Connecting them is the journey: people searching for solace, insight, purpose; gathering up their lives into discernible pieces of fact and conviction, hoping to get it right.

David Armstrong had received many awards for his stories, which have been widely published in literary journals. He is fiction editor of Witness Magazine and a recipient of the Black Mountain Institute Fellowship.

"A masterful exhibition in storytelling; a breathless page-turner. Ligon drives his narrative like a formula one racer. Buckle your seat belts and get ready for a thrilling ride."—Jonathan Evison, West of Here

"Part meditation on modern love's dark and often unexamined underbelly; part can't-put-it-down-even-for-a-dinner-break-thriller, this novel contains one of the most convincingly and complicatedly terrifying fictional characters I have run into."—Pam Houston, Contents May Have Shifted

"A wildly original love story, a ghost story, a tense and suspenseful story in which the wickedly talented Ligon channels voices—of the lost, the longing, and the damned."—Jess Walter, We Live in Water

Praise for Safe in Heaven Dead

"A superbly convincing first novel….An expertly motivated debut."—Kirkus, starred review

"This debut novel instantly seizes and holds the imagination."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Ligon is firmly in control, laying out the elements of the story like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle."—New York Times Book Review

Nikki has spent her life running from her abusive mother and the violent boyfriend she killed years ago, and now from his brother, Burke, just released from prison. Burke doesn't know yet how his brother died, but he's obsessed with finding Nikki and claiming her—and her daughter—as his own. Now she's run out of room to run.

Samuel Ligon is the author of Safe in Heaven Dead (HarperCollins, 2003) and Drift and Swerve. His stories have appeared in more than twenty literary journals. He teaches at Eastern Washington University's Inland Northwest Center for Writers, and is the editor of Willow Springs.

“…An adventure-filled journey... In spite of its references to hard academic science, Cretaceous Dawn is a first-class adventure story, an effortless read as engaging as vintage Jules Verne. The descriptive prose is both evocative and illuminating, and the plot has enough twists and cliffhangers to keep readers traveling on to the inevitable conclusion.” — Natural History

"Complicated, cool and vulnerable at the same time... you can't help falling for Pagan Kennedy's characters."— Stephen Dubner, The New York Times

Once a brilliant historian with a promising academic future, Win Duncan is at a crossroads in his career when he is mysteriously summoned by Litminov, a wild but brilliant chemist from his college days. Litminov has made millions since, and has bought a pharmaceutical company solely to develop MEM, an experimental drug that gives one the ability to recall life’s best memories with crystal clarity. 

Duncan becomes a beta tester and loses himself to the most delicious moments of his past—those precious few years with his mother who died tragically when he was just a child; ecstatic sex with his wife when they first fell in love—until he discovers the dark side effects of a drug that turns the past into pornography and renders the present useless.

A proven master of underground lit, beat fiction and narrative non-fiction, Pagan Kennedy takes on America’s obsession with the idealized past with freshness, wit, and an uncanny ability to measure the pulse of post-modern culture.

Pagan Kennedy is the author of seven books. The most recent, Black Livingstone, was a New York Times Notable Book and a winner of the Massachusetts Book Award. Her novel Spinsters won a Barnes & Noble Discover Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award. Her articles appear regularly in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Spin, and Salon.

BRITISH COMEDY AWARD winner, Chips Hardy's debut novel, Each Day a Small Victory is  "... is not just a rich, sensuous, deeply humorous animal story - it is also a brilliant celebration of life, death and the whole damn thing. "

Meet Max. He's made a name for himself as a rabid psychopath who uses random acts of violence to instigate a campaign of terror. He feels his blood thirsty reputation is undeserved and wants to set the record straight.

Each Day a Small Victory  is a month-by-month look at Max's fraught and bloody encounters, as both the hunter and the hunted. 

"Pulp Fiction meets Wind in the Willows."   — Jake Arnott , Author of   The Long Firm

"The memorable feat of a quirky and engaging imagination. "  Sir Roy Strong

"I've been reading a remarkable little book -  Each Day a Small Victory  by Chips Hardy. It's a kind of cute animal tale with a twist - it ain't cute! Far from it. This is anthropomorphic nature red in tooth and claw, with a twist of black humour. The anti-hero of the book, Max, is a stoat whose only aim in life is to find his next meal, while avoiding becoming someone else's. In that sense, it's the most honest animal story I've ever come across, and it's a great read. Chips clearly knows his countryside very well indeed - there is plenty of detail about the various animal characters and their habits. He is a British Comedy Award winner. The book has some stunning illustration by Oscar Grillo, who has worked on Monsters Inc and Men in Black, among others." —   Sporting Shooter  Magazine

– Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish and This Isn’t Going to End Well 

Port Kydd, 1929. Joshua Rivers, his pregnant wife Lily, his criminal sister Olive, a geriatric dog Orla, and a cast of ne'er-do-wells eke out life in The Swill, a speakeasy passed down through the Rivers family. Outside, political and race wars rage in The Bonny, the rough Irish neighborhood where they have always lived. But when Olive's in trouble and asks her brother to help her pull a job--one with roots that reach way back into the Rivers family history--who will take the fall? Can The Swill shelter the family, as it always has, or is their luck gone for good? 

“Why these novels aren’t on the way to a Netflix studio right now is beyond me. Whoever gets to play detective Franz Kafka will have the role of a lifetime.” — Mark Stevens, Author of the Allison Coil Mystery series

The fourth title in Kevin Jackson’s magnificent maritime history series, Nelson’s Victory, explores the remarkable achievements of the British naval and national hero Horatio Nelson and his victory and death at The Battle of Trafalgar. As with other titles in the series, Jackson demolishes the myths that abound about Nelson’s nature and reveals the real man behind hyperbole. Nelson was a smooth operator who demonstrated considerable political instincts and worked his way up the naval ladder with ruthless ambition.

"History as you long to read it, charismatic, concise and unputdownable." — HORATIO CLARE

"History as you long to read it, charismatic, concise and unputdownable." — Horatio Clare

A RIVETING ACCOUNT OF THE VOYAGE OF THE MAYFLOWER that looks at the reality behind the mythical status and the journey that created the New World. Most of the voyagers of that famed 1620 crossing of the Atlantic were not in fact religious pilgrims but people intent on forging a better life for themselves in the virgin territory of America's east coast. 130 hardy souls were confined in a space no bigger than a tennis court, braving the "Northern Crossing' without any firm idea of what awaited them in the New World.

A rollicking rapid read, written so compellingly that the reader will feel the swell of the sea on every page. Kevin Jackson brings the stories of these great adventurers and mariners to life, all packed into just 128 pages.

Published to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the fabled crossing of the “Pilgrim Fathers” from Plymouth, England. The pilgrims, who held Puritan Calvinist religious beliefs, sighted land at Cape Cod and first anchored in Provincetown Harbour on November 11/12 1620. And from there went on to found the Plymouth Colony.

"Beautiful and ambitious….Rooted in the rich haiku tradition and giving us an international sense of place."—Marjory Wentworth, South Carolina Poet Laureate

Six global partners in distant regions create poetry that is immediate, intimate, and modern, in an ancient poetic form. While exploring the richness of seasons, the book metaphorically visits incidents such as the Arab Spring, climate change, and urban violence. With Catherine Aubelle (France), Flor Aguilera Garcia (Mexico), Gabriele Glang (Germany), and Kae Morii (Japan).

What have we humans
done? Tremors shake, roil coastlands.
Irene roars ashore.

Joyce Brinkman, Indiana Poet Laureate 2002–08, is a proponent of poetry as public art.

Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, Virginia Poet Laureate 2006–08, is the author of six books of poetry.

At times heartbreaking, at times shatteringly beautiful…. The rawness of Jabair's anger is all-encompassing and powerful…. Amid this pain are startling moments of joy and empathy. A beautiful meditation on forgiveness after great loss, and the unbearable pain of separation.—Marie-Helene Bertino, author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas

Based on true events, Pamela L. Laskin captures the anguished survival of a 13-year-old boy after he is abandoned by his refugee family in war-torn Myanmar…. In breathtaking free verse, Laskin explores the heart of this uneducated, desperate man-child as he struggles with feelings of betrayal and rage, all while experiencing the aching confusion of new love. Informed by her own daughter's on-location aid work with refugees from Myanmar, Laskin goes beyond the headlines to create a stunningly poignant tale of grief, struggle, and emotional redemption.—Suzanne Weyn, author of The Bar Code Tattoo trilogy

Laskin bravely and movingly tackles one of our decade's saddest and direst human rights crises. The protagonist of Why No Goodbye? must contend with a double loss: his family and his land. Laskin's use of letters written in verse convincingly portrays Jubair's dislocation and loneliness, while also ensuring that he and other characters remain flesh and blood, vital and very human. This is an extraordinary accomplishment.—Hasanthika Sirisena, author of The Other One, winner of The Juniper Prize for Fiction

There has been a lot written about the Rohingya crisis in recent years, but nothing quite like this. Why No Goodbye? is unique in form and heart-wrenching in content. Through verse, the author helps expose the painful wake of the world's newest genocide.—Matthew Smith, co-founder and CEO, Fortify Rights

Pamela L. Laskin is a lecturer in the English Department at The City College, where she directs The Poetry Outreach Center and teaches children's writing in the MFA Division. She is the author of five books of poetry and several picture books, most recently Homer the Little Stray Cat (2017). Harper Collins published Ronit & Jamil, a Palestinian/Israeli Romeo and Juliet in verse for teens, in 2017. She is a member of PSA, American Academy of Poets & SCBWI.

Well known by readers of gay and lesbian fiction for her award-winning short story collections and novels; notorious in the legal profession as the nation's "foremost authority on lesbians and law" (Village Voice), a professor at the City University of New York, a young mother raising a son, Ruthann Robson's breadth of experience is unique among American poets. With seamless use of poetic craft and ironic wit, Robson tackles subjects as political as they are bizarre: the young woman chained to a radiator by her mother to keep her safe from harm; the teenager who gets herself knocked up because it's less dangerous to be an unwed mother than a lesbian. Affecting, terrifying, but always bathed in a clear hard light, these poems introduce a stunning intelligence and a bold new voice in American poetry.

"Ardent, passionate, and exquisitely queer…Robson's sense of playfulness is wonderful …The poems in Masks are startling not only for their quirky, often whimsical, humanity, but also for their imaginative use of form… There is history in this book. Witch burnings. Concentration camps. Poverty. Robson covers terrifying, white hot terrain with unflinching honesty and a poet's heart… She takes the magnifying glass of poetic language and investigates detail by detail every aspect of the female condition."-Lambda Book Report

"Another excellent book of poetry from 1999, Masks reveals how time and the moment of vision drive the poet to turn upon experience and make language out of it. These impressive poems swallow any distance between maker and reader as they pass from the glories of relationships to the price of loss. Some of Robson's best work is poems about famous women such as Frida Kahlo, Alice B. Toklas, Diane Arbus and Isadora Duncan. This is a truly marvelous collection that haunts the reader and never diminishes the art of the poem."-Bloomsbury Review

"Robson gives you more than you bargained for...Her first collection of poetry is terse yet throbbing, filled with the raw, aggressive energy of someone who can't be bothered with niceties...there is definite craft here: these lines aren't just thrown out but clearly thought and ret

Zany, over-the-top and sexy, while achingly poignant and real, Waiting for Elvis  is the bitingly funny follow-up to Toni Graham's award winning collection The Daiquiri Girls . In 11 darkly comic, interconnected stories that read as seamlessly as a novel, Graham exposes the hilarious side of loneliness and introduces Jane, the most beguiling single woman since Bridget Jones.

Nearing 50, Jane is a San Francisco psychotherapist-turned-dog walker, a wild woman in an ever-changing body. She hasn't had a lover since Lars, the unfaithful, hedonistic love of her life, was decapitated in a car accident after a New Year's Eve quarrel. But grief be damned! With equal parts alcohol and attitude, Jane lurches after all life has to offer--ever reminded that meeting the right man is as likely as a proposal from a dead Elvis.

Lost River is the story of the Van Beest family, which inherits a house at the edge of a magical forest where the dead return from the afterlife. When 13-year-old Anne’s mother, a midwife, delivers a stillborn baby and her father, a mortician, accidentally brings that infant back to life, the Van Beests find themselves at the center of a drama that raises questions about the relationship between the living and the dead. 

Winner of the Pushcart Prize and the Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize

"Molly Giles’ stories have always been among my favorites since I first read her work thirty-seven years ago. This collection is her best ever. What an irreverent, original voice! I found myself gasping in shock and laughter, feeling at the end of each tale that I had garnered strange wisdom on the human heart and its unerring sense for finding trouble." — Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

The speakers in Molly Giles’s Wife With Knife offer their truths with surprising starkness: “[T]he actual heart looks more like a tongue than a valentine” states the grief-flayed aunt of “Agate Beach,” while the careless driver of “Accident” thinks “If I rear-ended anyone in California, I might be sued or shot but I would not be prayed upon.” Many of the stories are not traditional narratives but glimpses of the trouble or healing that lies ahead: teens refusing to heed traffic, lovers staring down death and betrayal and closure. Like a street magician’s trick, Wife With Knife holds out each everyday tragedy or quiet triumph only to replace it seamlessly with another.

"Essential reading for the devout, the agnostic, and the atheist. In tackling the question of the religious brain, Graziano is respectful, sincere, and scientifically plausible. This might even be an Important Book."—Sam Wang, author of Welcome to Your Brain

"A beautifully crafted, tightly scripted account of how the far-flung legions of the brain's neurons give rise to social awareness and our notions of soul, religion and God."—Christof Koch, author of The Quest for Consciousness

"Lucid and engaging. . . . Moves with pace and humor."—Philip Johnson-Laird, author of Mental Models

"Do we know the origins of Gods and ghosts? This well-written book makes the bold case that new discoveries in social neuroscience can illuminate human spiritual experience."—Terry Sejnowski, PhD, Salk Institute/UC San Diego

Writing for the general public, Michael S. A. Graziano explores the controversial relationship between science and religion, first dismissing the "science versus religion" debate as outdated. The cutting-edge field of social neuroscience explains how our perceptions of our own consciousness, of other minds, and of spirits and gods depend on machinery in the brain that evolved to make us socially intelligent animals. In clear prose without technical jargon, Graziano discusses his and others' findings in this twenty-year-old science and the implications for human spirituality and religion.

Michael S. A. Graziano, professor of neuroscience, Princeton University, is the author of numerous articles on the functioning of the brain. He is internationally known for fundamental discoveries about sensory-motor coordination. His previous book on the brain, The Intelligent Movement Machine, was published by Oxford University Press in 2008.

Lucy Lehman has a secret. Everybody loves her eccentric family but nobody knows what's really going on. Her mother is a respected dance therapist, able to calm the most incorrigible delinquents in the Bronx. Her father, just returned from WW2, is a working class hero. On a good night they'll eat snack food for dinner, do the dishes in the tub while the kids are taking a bath and sing old labor songs. But on a bad night, when dad comes home in one of his dark moods and mom retreats to her bed, surrounded by the empty bottles of pills she's charmed out of neighborhood pharmacists, the insults fly along with the furniture.

Told with wit, understanding, and remarkable pluck, The War at Home is a warts-and-all autobiographical novel in the tradition of The Liar's Club, in which an inseparable brother and sister thrive in spite of the crazy household created by their parents and learn to raise themselves to survive.

The War At Home evokes the more innocent world of New York City in the 1950's, where lonely teenagers can find a safe haven in the Botanical Gardens and the Bronx River speaks of freedom as surely to two Jewish run-aways as to Huckleberry Finn.

"Honestly strange and strangely honest. . . . Remarkably compelling and powerful. Weaver's authenticity of characters, situations, and bygone eras emanates from sheer originality of style. This amazing novel is a stellar achievement—gritty, funny, fresh, and bold. It will make your eyes bug out and your pulse race. And how it shines, shines with humanity!"—Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab's Wife

"Southern Gothic to the core, suffused with a humor as dark as the bottom of a Georgia well. . . .Weaver has stepped forward for the benefit of anyone who reads American fiction."—Kirby Gann, author of Our Napoleon in Rags

"Savagely funny, wildly ambitious. . . . A bawdy, brutal, and beautiful meditation on identity, sex, and mercy. Weaver has a fiercely distinctive vision."—K.L. Cook, author of The Girl from Charnelle

"Darkly comic, deeply poignant. . . . Billie Girl is the adventurer through a long, strange trip that is life itself."—Roy Hoffman, author of Chicken Dreaming Corn

Abandoned as in infant because of her incessant crying, Billie Girl is raised by two women who are brothers. Her life, a gender-bending puzzle filled with dark humor, is a series of encounters with strangers who struggle along with what they are given: a bigamist husband, a long-lost daughter named after a car, a lesbian preacher's wife, a platonic second husband who loved her adoptive father. Twin themes of sexuality and euthanasia run throughout. In a journey from hard-dirt Georgia farm to end-of-life nursing home, Billie Girl comes to understand the mercy of killing.

An engineer whose life is in shambles meets a blind oceanographer who spends her life at sea. In this memoir of their courtship, David Fisichella writes of science, love, adventure, and danger on the ocean. He survives heavy weather, an equator crossing, and a pirate attack off the coast of Somalia. He learns how scientists study ocean physics and why their research is so important, how people live for months on a crowded boat, and what it means to be working for, and dating, the chief scientist. Told with humor, gritty details, and a refreshing sense of wonder about our oceans.

A long-extinct beetle appears in a physics lab. Four-and-a-half people and a dog are hurled 65 million years through time, to the Age of the Dinosaurs, and paleontologist Julian Whitney and his companions have only one chance for rescue. 

Meanwhile in the lab, police chief Sharon Earles must solve the mystery of why half a body remains where five people had just been. Physicists try to determine what went wrong but can they fix the vault in time to retrieve the missing people—and do they want to?

Tony Hillerman fans will welcome Medhat's excellent debut and series launch, a refreshing take on Navajo country's crime, culture, and history. …Medhat, who holds a Ph.D. in medical anthropology, uses pathos and humor, tragedy and comedy, to spin an entertaining and original\ mystery.—Publishers Weekly starred review

Crimes, cops, and communities that don't respect each other's cultural differences—all sound current and familiar. In…The Quality of Mercy, one police officer, an outsider to the Southwest, works to solve the murder of yet another young Navajo man as feelings of distrust mount among people who live together and need to depend on each other. In this fast-paced story, some people worry that nothing will change, and that one more person will get away with murder. For readers who don't know much about the Navajo, Medhat provides insight into their culture, past and present.… Like the rearview mirror on the cover reflecting a dark horizon, Medhat offers readers a chance to reflect on actions, inactions, and the lack of understanding and trust between the smaller cultural groups and the majority population.… More books featuring this winning character would be welcome. —Rain Taxi Review of Books

It is… a buddy novel, a work of history and collective and inter-generational trauma, a play with genre, from noir…to road movie with a nod through the rear-view mirror to Hunter S. Thompson. It deals with the pragmatics and compromises of daily living in a land that is far less than promised, its institutions deeply flawed. It is nevertheless a novel of kindness, depth and generosity, and it is under no illusions both as to the best as well as to the worst of what we can be.—European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counseling

 A New Crimefighting Duo is Born.—Durango Herald

A fine Navajoland whodunit.—Four Corners Free Press
About the Author: Katayoun Medhat was raised in Iran and Germany, studied anthropology in Berlin and London, and worked in an adolescent psychiatric unit, learning much about human resilience. She practiced as an intercultural psychotherapist before earning her PhD in medical anthropology, which led her to the Navajo Nation.

The young Charles Darwin was like a young Indiana Jones. For five years in his mid-twenties, he sailed on the BEAGLE around the world, exploring jungles, climbing mountains, trekking across deserts. With every new landfall, he had new adventures: he rode through bandit country, was thrown into jail by revolutionaries, took part in an armed raid with marines, survived two earthquakes, hunted and fished. He suffered the terrible cold and rain of Tierra del Fuego, the merciless heat of the Australian outback and the inner pangs of heartbreak. He also made the discoveries that finally led him to formulate his theory of Natural Selection as the driving force of evolution. The five-year voyage of the BEAGLE was the basis for all Darwin's later work; but it also turned him from a friendly idler into the greatest scientist of his century.

"Jacob White can write."—Padgett Powell

"A wide array of layered stories written with disarming care."—Ron Carlson, author of Five Skies

"Jacob White's characters are in trouble, and their creator brings them to life with language both lush and harsh, gritty and great."—Antonya Nelson, author of Bound

"Fresh, fierce, sad, funny, deep. The author is a natural story teller, with a voice that is like music. . . . This book sings. It's real, it's beautiful."—Lev Raphael, author of The German Money

Set largely in the modern South, the stories in Being Dead in South Carolina concern people who no longer recognize themselves, who have arrived, like the Sunbelt itself, to a strange day that seems disconnected from all the old days, the old stories, the old selves. Yet it's always on this day we must answer for ourselves—right an overturned car, recover the body of a brother, convince a son of our worth and his. We are adrift with bad judgment, a little loose in the head, but searching for the correction.

A South Carolina native, Jacob White studied creative writing at the University of Houston, where he received the Donald Barthelme Memorial Fellowship in Fiction. His fiction has appeared in many journals, including the Georgia Review, New Letters, Salt Hill, and the Sewanee Review, from which he received the Andrew Lytle Prize. He teaches creative writing at Johnson State College and co-edits Green Mountains Review.

"Move over Walt Longmire. Make room for Franz Kafka, aka 'K.' Expertly plotted, beautifully written, eloquent, colloquial, wry, insightful . . . Medhat demonstrates a keen sense of place and Navajo culture and history, with superior attention to language; smart, witty, often humorous and always precise analogies, metaphors, and similes. A sharp eye for detail and sprachgefühl for putting observations into words. Style, grace, a confident, compelling, and controlled narrative voice. The sophisticated narration dances from omniscient to close-third without any false steps or trips. A very smooth operator, this writer. The characters glide off the page. This book is a high-wire act, and the author shines a bright, steady beam on the dark stage where clashing cultures meet."—Sara Pritchard, author of Crackpots

Quixotic cop Franz Kafka's small-town routine is disrupted by a mysterious death at Chimney Rock. Navajo cop Robbie Begay joins the murder investigation, which leads the mismatched duo across the reservation into the victim's fraught past, to associates living under the shadow of heinous crimes, cunningly camouflaged meth-merchants, and sweet-natured squash-growers. The killer, it turns out, is much closer to home.

Katayoun Medhat was raised in Iran and Germany and studied anthropology in Berlin and London. Before training as an intercultural therapist, she worked in an adolescent psychiatric unit, which taught her much about human resilience. For her PhD in medical anthropology, she researched mental health and alcohol rehab services on the Navajo Nation, and along the way learned to appreciate the healing power of humor as life force.

"Poetry at its most satirical and courageous. A tremendous book."—Seamus Heaney

"Few voices in American literature are so honest and daring."—Mark Strand

"One of our most brilliant poets."—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

"I feel the primal grain and temper of the genuine here."—William Heyen

"A lament, a protest, an inextinguishable song."—Sherod Santos

"Among the best and most original poets in America."—Stanley Kunitz

"Nothing short of splendid."—Robert Nazarene

"The kind of energy found in the poems of William Carlos Williams and Gary Snyder."—Joseph Bruchac

These poems tell harsh truths of hopelessness and genocide. The confusion of children whose religion is forbidden; the ironic poverty of a lottery winner; an alternate American history in which Columbus turns and sails away—in deceptively simple language, we hear the protest of survivors. "'Indian' is not a derogatory word. It's what we call ourselves."

AFTER A SERMON AT THE CHURCH OF INFINITE CONFUSION

At ten, Mary Caught-in-Between
came home from sunday school,
told every animal and bird and fish
they couldn't talk anymore,
told her drum it couldn't sing anymore,
told her feet they couldn't dance anymore,
told her words they weren't words anymore,
told Raven and Coyote they weren't gods anymore,
said god was a starving white man
with long hair and blue eyes and a beard
who no one loved enough to save
when they nailed him to a totem pole.

John Smelcer has written over forty books of poetry and prose. He is a member of the Alaskan Ahtna tribe.

In Midnight in the Guest Room Jan Bailey locates the "bliss of the routine" experiences in women’s lives—childhood, love, marriage, sexuality, birth, child rearing, aging—and transforms them into moments of transcendent power and beauty. With uncommon wit and sensitivity she offers us poems about the pleasures of a woman’s soft and unstylish belly; the fierceness of mother love; the desolation of a miscarriage; the hilarious illusion of sexual healing; the unexpected eroticism of breast feeding.

Rooted in the landscape of the South, celebrating the private treasures to be found in the everyday world, her poems speak to us all of the joys and the losses of the seasons of our lives.

The 'Grrrl' phenomenon is a contemporary expression of young women's humor and rage exploding in books and zines, concerts, films, and the internet. In homage to a new generation of tough young feminists, Marge Piercy presents a gathering of poems that reveal the poet as an early 'Grrrl.' 

Comprising over ninety poems selected from four books now out of print; poems previously published in literary magazines but never before collected and very early poems never published, this volume presents the bold and passionate political verse for which Piercy is well known alongside poems celebrating the sensual pleasures of gardening and cooking and sex; funny poems about New Year's Eve and warring boom boxes; vulnerable poems in which a young working class woman from the Midwest takes stock of herself and the limits of her world. 

For longtime fans and those new to Piercy's early work, this volume is an indispensable addition to the oeuvre of one of America's best-known and best-selling poets.

Charles Bukowksi, Hubert Selby Jr., and Denis Johnson are familiar names in the literature about the druggies, rockers, criminals, and whores who habituate the dark side of American fiction, but there are few women writers in the club. Enter Ann Wood, an award-winning journalist who’s been down and out and survived to laugh it off. With a frighteningly matter-of-fact style and no social agenda, Wood is an American original who writes like a female Charles Bukowksi: crude, rude, and raw; often very funny, sometimes shocking, disarmingly poignant, and incredibly readable.

In a story with parallels to the author’s own life, Bolt Risk is an unapologetic bildungsroman about a young woman from an exclusive New England college who becomes a personal assistant, otherwise known as a “paid butt-wiper,” to a Hollywood sitcom star. 

Fleeing the boredom of the tinsel town fringe, she lands a job as an exotic dancer and falls for Adam, lead guitarist of the popular thrash band Z, six feet four inches of raw talent, stud beauty, and unrestrained ego. Thus begins a droll and harrowing ride through the underworld of Los Angeles strip clubs, dive bars, and drug motels that sends her to a mental hospital, where she is astutely classified as a “bolt risk,” a kid who is very likely to escape. 

Here the author re-creates the absurd daily world of Girl, Interrupted with a remarkable toughness that laughs in the face of institutional horror.

Ann Wood writes like few women before her. If Charles Bukowski had been a woman, Bolt Risk might have been his first novel.